Boy Suspended for Pointing Chicken

c The Associated Press

 
JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) - An 8-year-old boy was suspended from school for 3 days after pointing a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and saying, ``Pow, pow, pow.''

The incident apparently violated the Jonesboro School District's zero-tolerance policy against weapons. The boy was suspended last week.

Kelli Kissinger, mother of first-grader Christopher, said she believed the punishment was too severe.

``I think a chicken strip is something insignificant,'' she said. ``It's just a piece of chicken. How could you play like it's a gun?''

South Elementary principal Dan Sullivan said he was prevented by law from discussing Christopher's suspension.

Sullivan said the school has zero-tolerance rules because the public wants them.

In March 1998, four students and a teacher were killed and 10 others wounded when two youths opened fire on a schoolyard at Jonesboro's Westside Middle School.

``People saw real threats to the safety and security of their students,'' Sullivan said.

A school discipline form provided by the boy's mother and signed by Sullivan says the child was suspended because he ``took a chicken strip off his plate, pointed it at (a teacher) and said 'Pow, pow, pow,' like he was shooting her.''

Sullivan said punishment for a threat ``depends on the tone, the demeanor, and in some manner you judge the intent. It's not the object in the hand, it's the thought in the mind. Is a plastic fork worse than a metal fork? Is a pencil a weapon?''

I wonder if that was the model of chicken the US issues the troops.  The M4 assult chicken complete with 30 rounds of dumplings.

M15A2;

Damned funny.

Too bad these idiots are running the show, though...

Sure, you laugh now, but next time it might be a pork chop. Then see who's laughing.

By the way M15A2, if you don't think food can be dangerous, consider the hot dog MRE!

Actually he got in trouble because it was a post ban chicken with a pre ban full auto feather flapper attached to it. [:D]

So you're suggesting that the "F" in BATF is short for "Feathered Food"?

And I remember when people said that thoughts cannot be policed.

Gee, so there's retards in other states, not just Calif???

That is absolutely insane.  What if he was using the chicken finger as a hammer and said Pow Pow.  Ridiculous.

I just read that ebay is banning the sale of chicken fingers on their auction site.

"The [1 1/2-inch-long gun-shaped medallion] posed no threat to students but could frighten someone who didn't get a good look at it, Poag said"

How mentally disabled do you have to be to be frightened by a 1.5 inch gun medallion?

That flushing sound you just heard was the sound of our society (and freedoms) going down the toilet via whats being ingrained in our children by the educational system. They teach anti-gun and pro-homosexuality (aka "alternative lifestyles")just to name a few. Hell my step-daughter who is in 1st grade came home one day shortly before the election and told us the teacher said "go home and tell your parents they should vote for Al Gore" then afteer the election the teacher asked the kids how their parents voted! Back on track however if a kid takes a firearm to school he should be suspended and the parents publically flogged...but pointing a loaded chicken strip or a small gun shaped medalion...OH BROTHER! Can you imagine what would happen to these kids if they played "cops and robers" or war like we used to....they would get the death penalty !!!!!!

Time to ban chicken fingers from school lunches. Someone might get hurt by all the fat and calories that are in those things.

The kid said "pow, pow, pow" and was suspended for three days. If he had  only said "pow" once would he have been suspended only one day. Seems like the school has a "one day per pow" policy. I hope the chicken wasn't finger lickin good or else we could be getting into some safety issues.

Last year on vacation I was looking at the forest, when I noticed a boy about 10 years old walking down a trail, he stooped down and picked up a stick about three feet long and a crook on one end. He put it up to his shoulder like a rifle and started 'hunting' critters with it.
The kids seem fine it`s the adults that are in trouble.

Next Headline:

Boy charged: Assult with a deadly chicken.

Here's an article from December.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel December 20, 2000 Wednesday
Copyright 2000


Americans overreact to youth crime

VINCENT SCHIRALDI

By now, we've all heard the stories:

-- Two Virginia elementary school students tried on felony charges for putting hand soap in a teacher's coffee as a prank.

-- A pair of New Jersey kindergartners expelled from school for pointing their fingers at one another and saying "bang, bang."

-- Two elementary school students in Georgia suspended for making a list of those they'd like to see dead, including Barney the purple dinosaur and the Spice Girls.

-- The arrest and handcuffing of a 12-year-old District of Columbia girl for eating french fries on the Metro subway system.

The common thread throughout these stories is that a zero-tolerance response to youthful misbehavior makes zero common sense. But these unfathomable reactions become understandable when you consider that most Americans believe juvenile crime is an increasing threat, when it is actually lower than it's been for a generation. It is our fears of our children that are driving us to expel, handcuff and incarcerate kids, not their behavior.

Data released just last week by the Justice Department show that youth homicide arrests have fallen by more than two-thirds, from more than 3,000 in 1993 to fewer than 1,000 in 1999.

Over the last 25 years, the Census Bureau's National Crime Victimization Survey has asked more than 40,000 crime victims about their cases. The bureau's most recent report found that youth crime was at its lowest rate in the survey's history.

Still, Americans are increasingly fearful of children and consistently exaggerate the proportion of crime that young people commit. In 1998, the same year the Census Bureau found youth crime at a new low, nearly two-thirds of those responding to a questionnaire said they believed youth crime was increasing.

Sixty percent of respondents to a 1996 California survey conducted by Fairbanks, Maslin and Associates reported that they believed youths "committed most crime nowadays." In reality, more than four out of every five arrests in California in 1996 were of adult offenders.

Continued......

continued...

Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the area of adults' fear of school violence. In a 1999 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 71% of respondents indicated that they thought it was likely a school shooting would happen in their community. Yet according to National School Safety Center data, the chance of being killed in America's schools that year was 1 in 2 million.

During the mid-1990s, it became fashionable in some academic and political circles to stereotype young people as thugs. For example, Princeton professor John DiIulio graphically warned of a "rising tide of juvenile superpredators" waiting to engulf America.

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) authored a bill titled the "Violent Youth Predator Act" and stated that such juvenile predators aren't children anymore. "They're the most violent criminals on the face of the Earth," McCollum said.

The media responded in kind. From 1992 to 1996, there was a 721% increase in coverage of homicides on network evening newscasts, despite a 20% decline in America's homicide rate. Research by the University of California-Los Angeles and the Berkeley Media Studies group found that young people are depicted by the media as violent crime suspects in excess of their share of violent crime arrests.

The vilification of teenagers has found its way into legislation affecting young people throughout the country. For example, since 1992, when the national juvenile crime drop began, nearly every state in the country passed laws to make it easier to try children as adults.

In California, the same voters who believed that youths "committed most crime nowadays" overwhelmingly passed an initiative to try juveniles as young as 14 in adult court. This despite the fact that, during the 1990s in California, youth crime fell faster than adult crime.

In America's schools, this information gap has driven funds away from education and toward surveillance, as cash- strapped schools in even very safe locations dole out scarce funds for metal detectors, cameras and security personnel. The result: 3 million of America's students were suspended or expelled in 1997, twice the rate of the worst- behaving crop of teenagers with whom I grew up.

As we look at today's young people, it's important that we see hope, not despair, for their future and craft public policy building on their assets, instead of punishing them for our ignorance.

It probably sucks to be a teacher as well. I agree that some of this zero tolerance stuff is BS but.... Gone are the days when kids learned and demonstrated good manners and showed respect for people. Gone are the days when a teacher could smack the piss out of a kid that was disruptive or disrespectful.  Do none of you think it odd that these very young elementary kids show no respect for teachers or anyone else?  Don't you think it odd that a little kid would pretend to shoot his teacher (finger,gun,whatever), or act like he is poisening him- with soap.  Is guess it's a generational thing? Do you consider hatred and retribution in a 7 year old normal?  I'm 45 and these things would never have even crossed my mind as a kid. We've gone from expecting "yes sirs" from kids, to tolerating F*ck you's. That's too bad.

I personally have never met a first grader who uses extreme language to express themselves. I'm certain that such children exist, however I believe they are the exception not the rule.

Children today aren't somehow "genetically" more disrespectful towards adults. Rather, they are reflecting the behavior they observe from adults around them including the media.

A good teacher, and I have had them, commands respect from how he carries himself. A simple glance from him or her and you know you are out of line.

When I was in school, a number of married teachers were having affairs with other teachers, and we were aware of it. I had an english teacher in seventh grade who routinely poured whiskey into her coffee cup, had a playboy symbol on her glasses, and smoked three packs a day. In elementary school, I had a teacher who picked her nose everyday, really digging into it with gusto in front of the class. How does this behavior compare to a little kid holding up a chicken finger?

I remember doing really stupid stuff in first grade, most of it worse than what this poor kid did. Most of the time I didn't think about what I was doing I just did it on impulse. It amazes me that I could have been suspended for the same behavior today. Then I was put in the corner 15 mins or maybe a few brief paddilings, today a child gets the hell knocked out of their self esteem.

It is so much easier to give a child a dose of ritalin to zonk them out during the day than spend the resources necessary to give constructive meaning to a child's day.

I agree that everyone including teachers need to improve.  I work with three young ex- teachers that left teaching,after a few years because they felt hopeless about the whole situation.  They got no respect from students, parents or school administrators.   They spent much of the day dealing with trouble makers and distributing medications. Private schools don't have these problems because they can actually enforce rules.

I'm with you Lee.  Teacher's hands are tied, they can't control classes and therefore can't properly teach.  I hear kids 10 and under spouting profanity at adults with total contempt because they know they can.  These are the same kids that their parents don't believe in spanking little Johnny.

I went to a Catholic school and let me tell you those nuns garnered respect!  And if I came home with my lip a little puffy cause I had the piss slapped out of me my parents made it plain that if I didn't straiten up I'd get more of it when I got home.

Now days when little Suzy or Johnny is bad he's punished by sending him to his room, with 70 channels of cable TV, a computer with internet access, and his playstation or N64 to boot.  Give me a break!  Am I the only old guy here that doesn't consider this punishment?  If I would have had that stuff when I was a kid I never would have left the house.

I don't believe in child abuse but some actions deserve a bit more than a time out.  I've yet to hurt my children other than their pride when they recieved a well deserved spanking.

I haven't laid a hand on my children in a couple of years.  But I don't have to because when I say ok that's enough they know I mean that's enough.  And from past experiences they know I'm not above bending them over my knee and tanning their hide.  Children are like animals their damn sure going to get away with what ever you let them.

Spare the rod, spoil the child!